Rafael Devers’ lame postgame comments should fuel Yankees to beat Red Sox

Here we go. New York Yankees vs Boston Red Sox. AL Wild Card Game. At Fenway Park. Tuesday night. The Rivalry makes it to October yet again.

The one could’ve been at Yankee Stadium had the Bombers not botched their season-ending series against the Tampa Bay Rays, but they ended up getting the job done by going 6-3 in their final nine games against playoff teams. We’ll take it.

The Red Sox will finish the season “better” than New York with both teams at 92-70 because they won the season series 10-9, despite taking an early 7-0 lead and getting swept in the last three-game set to cough up their Wild Card stranglehold.

They got it back, though, because they faced two of the worst teams in baseball to finish out the year … and actually needed a miracle-esque comeback on Sunday to seal the deal.

And, now, here we are, having to be fed some Boston underdog BS story after they secured home-field advantage for the Wild Card game.

Rafael Devers, who was the hero on Sunday with two homers, including the go-ahead shot in the ninth, continued that decade-long false narrative with his postgame comments and we’re quite frankly confused how this continues to seep into the DNA of every player who joins the Red Sox in recent years.

Yankees fans should be fed up with the Red Sox underdog narrative.

Ohhh yes, we forgot about all of those offseason stories talking about how there was no belief in the Red Sox, who have only made their roster worse ever since 2019. Devers’ comments sounding as if the Sox were a well-known contender to begin with and were shunned by the media and baseball community is simply a tired act from this franchise and their fans.

In fact … the Red Sox didn’t even end up too far ahead of their preseason projections. According to FanGraphs, Boston’s expected 2021 record was 83-79, good for 14th in baseball. They were eight wins better after wildly overachieving with a bad pitching staff. And also … they made the Wild Card Game. It’s not like they won the division and blew expectations out of the water.

On the flip side, the Yankees mightily underachieved and got punked by all of their division opponents, which is why they’re even in this position. The Sox, meanwhile, reached their predicted ceiling of AL Wild Card team with their collection of All-Stars (they still have a very good team!) in addition to cost-effective (aka cheap) free agent signings that exceeded their output (in classic Boston fashion) and still nearly blew it with nine games to go.

All in all, we’re sick of hearing this from Boston, and especially the Red Sox, who are almost NEVER counted out over the last decade and a half. They have four World Series championships since 2004. The underdog party is over. You’re a perennial contender. Better start acting like one, too, or else Tuesday night isn’t going to be as fun as you thought.

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